The St. Louis Blues benefitted from beng in a very weak West Division made up of the six 1967 expansion teams.

The Blues made the Stanley Cup finals in three successive seasons (1968, 1969, and 1970) only because the playoff format had the far better East division teams battling each other for one spot in the final while one of the new teams were guaranteed the other spot.

To illustrate the disparity in the talent between the East and West Divisons in those years, let's look at how the Blues did in those finals:

Not only did St. Louis fail to win any of their games in the finals, they never won so much as a period in any of those 12 games! Hockey fans often referred to the East final those years as the real Stanley Cup final.